The Life of Study as Study of Life
by wanda von dunayev
Summary: In Voren'thal's library, everything is in its perfect place. One-shot, drabble.


**The Life of Study as Study of Life**

In Voren'thal's library, everything is in its perfect place. One-shot, drabble.

* * *

><p>In Voren'thal's library, everything is in its perfect place.<p>

It's become as much a part of him as his name, and he revels in it the way other men revel in their estates and their military decorations and their mistresses. His keepers wring their hands over him as he putters around with a floating train of books at his heels, or worse, teeters atop a needle-fine ladder, but he does not trust the assistant librarians to do the job. A text misplaced is a text lost forever in a library of this size.

He has spent no dearth of time arranging things, throwing himself into organising the collection with the tactical intelligence he once showed on the battlefield, placing pamphlets and manuscripts the way a general places troops. The most popular areas must be kept separate to minimize crowding while still streamlining traffic. Magical theory has been divided into four sections (_meta-theory_, _history of_, _mathematical models_, and _physics_), the bookshelves staggered between less popular areas (_economic theory_, _ethics_, _medicine_—does it say something of the elves that they don't want to read these things?). The magisters complain about this, but in any elven library these are the first texts to be stolen or lost or destroyed. Voren'thal has not yet had a single casualty.

He keeps the books on philosophy of magic along the far wall where the crystal light is brightest because their text is written in the smallest of hands; the ancient epic poems, so old and so delicate they cannot be touched, some of which were transcribed on the Long Exile from Kalimdor, are kept beneath glass in a windowless recess so as not to be faded by the sun; the contemporary plays are on the top floor where the doors that lead onto the balcony are always open and the breeze lifts the curtains and you can see Shattrath, stretched beneath you for miles.

Everything is organised, neat, impeccably arranged, as unproblematic and tidy as life can never be. Voren'thal is fiercely protective of his library, and his underlings often joke—loudly, so he can hear them—that he loves it the way most people love their children. It is a pleasant lie. The sort one tells oneself to make truths easier to swallow. And Voren'thal has not faced easy truths for a long, long time.

* * *

><p>Liadrin rarely comes, but when she does she generally goes to the 'history (military)' section, folding herself into the curve where the shelf clings to the wall. He worries that her mail will gouge holes in his books. He worries that she is breaking their spines. He worries that she does not replace them properly. His books require the gentlest of care. Liadrin is a brute. It's a bad combination.<p>

Today, however, she is in the political theory section, leaning against the wall, one of her heavy boots pressed against the shelf. She is almost definitely putting her weight on it and it is almost definitely going to break, and then Voren'thal will have to figure out how to throttle a woman with twice his muscle mass.

"If you want something in particular, I can help you," he says.

She looks up and colours a little; he's surprised her. "Thank you, Seer. But I am fine."

_I know _you're_ fine, _he thinks. _That's not the issue_. She is keeping her page with her finger, the long spiny ridge of her ring no doubt tearing into the paper. At least she's lowered the offending boot.

Then he notices the title, and that the text is in Common. He tilts it towards him so that he can see the spine. "'A Dissertation on the Rights of Women' by Lady Joyce Baxwens," he says, eyebrows raised. "I am... most surprised."

Her colour deepens. "Oh? What is it that offends you? That I'm reading about women, or that I'm reading a book by a human?"

"I said 'surprised', not 'offended'." Touchy girl. Still, she has her reasons for being worried—even here, in the piece and purity of his library, there is undoubtedly something politically imprudent about reading a book in an enemy language. "I fail to see the relevance of the work to your personal situation, though. Humans are far more backwards than we in such matters."

She shrugs and opens the text again. "I was curious. Did you know that in the human kingdoms inheritance generally passes to the eldest son, and not the eldest child?" She shakes her head. "I _lived_ with them once, and I always assumed they did things the way we did. How could I not see something that important?"

"The laws have changed since that book was written," he says. "Wait until you see what their divorce laws were like. They'll make you thank the Light you were born in Quel'Thalas, for all that's happened."

Her eyes widen a fraction at this, but she slips back to her careful neutrality. "You've read it?"

"Once or twice."

She laughs, and this time when she closes the book she does not hold her page. She gestures to the shelves around them. "Have you read every book in this library, Seer?"

He looks around. Once when he was a boy his master took him to the great library of Dalaran, and he saw the walls, fifty feet, a hundred feet high and punctuated with slots where the wizards kept their two-hundred-thousand scrolls; he walked across the marble floor with the gold lettering in Thalassian and Common that said _Seek, and be enlightened_. 'I'm going to read everything ever,' he told his master. And he tried—he gave it a good shot. But sometimes he walks through his library—after dark when only the scribes remain, bent over their work as candlelight flashes on the walls—and he does the math and realises that in the time left to him he might get through one whole wall of books, maybe two. Ten or twelve rows of shelves in a building with hundreds. And no more.

"Many," he says, "but no, not even nearly all of them. Not enough of them."

She replaces the book on the shelf, and he is both relieved and mortified to see that she puts it in the right place. "Do you have a favourite?"

He is so bewildered by this that he almost does not know what to say. "I beg your pardon?"

"A favourite book. Please tell me it's not something on ley-line intersections. I don't think I could handle that."

Saucy wench.

"There are many I've enjoyed, over the years." He makes his voice cold and formal, so as not to give away how much he enjoys this topic. "I suppose you'd prefer fiction."

"If at all possible. As long as the main character isn't a mage giving a dissertation on ley-lines."

He ignores the jab and considers this. "Perhaps... _Elissara_, by Highdawn? He was one of the first to use a heroic female protagonist. I think you'd like it quite a bit. The eponymous heroine is a warrior maiden, and she's sent on an extended journey, as these things go—but it's a break from the traditional quest structure, and it caused quite a stir in the Royal Academy when it was first published, because some scholars felt that..."

She is looking at him so blankly his voice simply trails away. "I'm not familiar with it. But if you like it, Seer, it must be good."

Liadrin has always been warm with him, tossing him compliments the way someone tosses scraps to birds, but this praise of his literary tastes makes him flush with pleasure even as he calls himself a fool. _Idiot, she doesn't know anything about it anyway, and you're far too old for her, and she's an unlettered buffoon who hasn't even heard of Highdawn, let alone read him. _

He clears his throat. "Yes, well, I'd be happy to show you the book. If you'd like."

"I would like it. I make no promises about the speed of my reading, though." The corners of her eyes are creased, and the lines deepen when she smiles. "And I hope you have book insurance."

_Dear Light, _he thinks, _if she hurts one of my books, Matriarch or no, I will draw and quarter her _personally_._

He leads her up the ramp to the top floor, leaning on his staff and going more slowly than he'd like. When he stumbles Liadrin catches him by the arm, her hands strong and gentle. He gives her a dirty look, an _I-could-have-done-it-myself_ look, but she does not release him, only laughs, a high, nervous laugh he is sure isn't her usual one. She holds on to him the rest of the way there, though he cannot tell whether she does so out of desire or kindness.

"Let's sit down for a second," she says when they step off the ramp and into the room. It is bright and cool, and from somewhere down below he can smell the melting sugar that goes into draenish sweets. He has not eaten lunch yet. The reminder does nothing for his mood.

"I'm not tired, and I'll thank you to keep your pity to yourself."

She tuts at him as if he is a disobedient child and not a well-respected archmage who is several centuries her senior, with more publications than she has battle scars. "Tell me, do you feel better protesting? Or do you do it just to vex me?"

For a flash of a moment he feels guilty—he is being cantankerous, clearly. And then he wonders whether he instead means 'captious'. He can't remember. Maybe it's both? Is his memory starting to go with his knees and his back and… well, most of him?

Never mind. Cantankerous it is. "Take your pick, Matriarch. I'd say they're related."

She ignores him and sits down on the long bench, gesturing at the overstuffed divan opposite her. Voren'thal scowls at it and chooses the seat beside her instead: hard-backed, uncomfortable, but that is the point. He has not gotten soft. _Let that young upstart of a blood knight remember that._

Still, as his breathing returns to normal, he realises how tiring he has found even the short jaunt. There is no question—he is not as young as he used to be, not by any standard. He feels his heart throbbing in his chest, lifts his hand to press it against his sternum.

"Are you alright?" Liadrin sounds worried.

"I am fine." He struggles to his feet, grateful for the neutral support of his staff as opposed to her hands. "Would you like to see the book or not?"

"Most definitely."

She follows him silently through the maze of low shelves like hedges scarce reaching his waist or her hips (they are the same height, but her legs are longer than his. It's completely normal that he'd notice this, isn't it?). Still, he can feel her eyes on him, on his back, and her concern is maddening. _I am not dead yet, you stupid girl. Let me live a little before that time comes, by the bloody Light_.

He can find the Highdawn novels without thinking, as if he is following a path he'd walked many times as a child. He is smiling before he realises it; he _has_ walked it as a child, every text as familiar as his own hands, or as the promenade in the Walk of Elders where he trudged to the Church of the Light on Friday evenings to pray with his grandfather. He opens his mouth to tell Liadrin this, certain that she will understand it, but then he suddenly realises that this is idiotic and irrelevant and she will think him mad—if she doesn't already.

With the book in hand he turns to her. She takes it gently, almost reverently, and her self-conscious seriousness makes him want to both roll his eyes and smile. "This," he says, "is one of the greatest stories of all time."

She examines it, her brow creased, as if expecting more from a book bearing that commendation. It is an unassuming little text, bound in the human style with a brown leather cover that looks like it might have come from a saddle and crumbling horse-hair glue and yellowed pages. "What's it about?"

"True love and death."

Her smile is teasing. "I'm not too interested in the latter anymore, but I'll give the former a try."

For some reason unknown to him—he cannot imagine why he should react this way—he blushes and lowers his eyes. This time Liadrin does laugh, but he is startled from his embarrassment when she roughly shoves the novel into her pack like a soiled handkerchief or a bloodied bandanna. He thinks with distaste that she probably has both of these articles in there as well.

"I'll take good care of it," she says. "Thank you, Seer. It will be a nice distraction from daily living."

He says, "Hmph," just for the sake of being bad-tempered, but he cannot fight his chuckle as she offers him her arm like a gallant soldier escorting a lady. "That Baxwens book has gotten to you, I think."

"Oh no, Seer," she says. "I've always been more man than woman."

He studies her profile and finds that he disagrees. "You have been… driven. It is not the same thing. She would chastise you for conflating the two, Lady Baxwens would."

"Mm." Her teeth flash blue-white in the light of the crystals as she smiles at him. "And I know what I like."

The forthrightness of the comment makes him bridle, and he is annoyed at himself for being so touchy; Pathaleon always teased him for being a prude, and Capernian Summerswan took no end of pleasure in torturing him with her flirtations and provocations. The memory of his two fallen friends makes his throat constrict. Pathaleon will never laugh again, and they had sent the Grand Astromancer's corpse back to Silvermoon, her head and body travelling in separate boxes.

"You're lost in thought," Liadrin says, placing her other hand on his shoulder. The touch lasts for only a moment, but in the interim her chest plate presses against his upper arm, and though he can't feel her body through it his heart races.

"I am thinking of—" Of life and death, of mortality, how short the flare of laughter and light and colour is, just a flash in an endless darkness. He coughs, and says, "I am thinking of the library."

She makes a noise of surprise, but she seems to think he is telling the truth. And, to his surprise, as he tightens his grip on her arm and tries not to stumble down the stairs, he is.

**The End**

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I could not resist writing about these two again, considering that the more I think about them the more I admire what an odd couple they are: the scholarly old man and the beautiful, brawny warrior-maiden-who's-not-quite-a-maiden.<p>

For those of you who have read _Fox Trap _(thanks, by the way!), this takes place much, much after that. Think during Cataclysm itself—I'm assuming Liadrin is called away for more administrative/political work in Shatt. Because I refuse to believe that she spends the rest of her life sobbing into the Sunwell and sitting quietly by while the Elven Menz have all the fun. No way. Liadrin is kicking ass and taking names on an alien planet.


End file.
